The workshop is organized as part of the 36th Annual Meeting of the German Society for Linguistics (DGfS), to be held at the University of Marburg, Germany, March 5-7, 2014.

Invited Speaker:

Adriana Belletti (University of Siena)

Relative clauses have been at the center of research in linguistic theory, psycho- /neurolinguistics and language acquisition as well as cognitive psychology. However, these disciplines have so far generally focused on their own research agenda. One exception is the so-called object-subject asymmetry in relative clauses, which has been found in acquisition and processing studies across languages and which has recently been approached with the syntactic account of relativized minimality (cf. Friedmann/Belletti/Rizzi 2009). However, most facets of relative clauses have only received attention in parts of the field. For example, differences between restrictive and non-restrictive RCs have been investigated mostly from a semantic perspective. Likewise, research on different relative clause types, i.a. free relatives and continuative wh-relatives, and on the analysis of relative clauses (raising, modification, or matching, cf. Donati & Ceccetto 2011) has almost exclusively been undertaken in theoretical syntax. At the same time, aspects such as differences between center-embedding and right-branching, the effect of animacy and plausibility constraints have been mainly addressed in acquisition and/or processing research (e.g., Kidd et al. 2007, Mac Donald et al. 1994).

The primary goal of our workshop is to discuss current questions concerning the forms and functions of relative clauses both from a theoretical and experimental perspective in order to advance current linguistic research.